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A PLAN 







OF 



IbEOTHERLY COPARTNERSHIP $ 



OF Till 



f NORTH AND SOUTH, 



FOR TIIE 



.'lb 



|j tactful (^dilution of Shtbcrn 




£e®~J&^& 



BY ELIHU BURRITT. 



PRICE, TEN CENTS. 



N E W YORK: 

D A Y TON AND BURDIC K 

2 9 ANN STREET. 



1856. 



ft 

PI 



WU|UUU UUUJL/f 11HU JLAtil DiimiiXWU U U IS U X 11 IV 1 il £ i 1» tl tt JUl I! i 14 U 



THE 

|fonre of f jp Sote of Dnuiit ; 

on 

THREE YEARS IN JERUSALEM, 

Tffi BMi ©F POKTSTOETS EHILAfEc 

Tlie Book is ;i large 12mo. volume, of 500 pages, and is embellished 
with a st.'.-i plate Portrait of the 

BEAUTIFUL «9£W!SH MAiDf W, 

/in Engraved Till« Page, and three large, splendid engravings, illustrating 
CHRIST RAISING THE WIDOW'S SON, 

THE BAPTISM OF OUR SAVIOUR, 

AND THE CRUCIFIXION, 
from entire new designs, and executed by the first artists in the country, 
making all together one of llie most beautiful and interesting bock/ ever 
offered to llie American public. 

The Author and Publishers being anxious to place 1 lie work in the hands 
of every person that is able to read, have fixed the price at 
THE UOW SUM OF $1 25. 



From the Christian Advocate and Journal. 

** This is certainly among the most delightful volumes we have ever 
read. It is very ably and most eloquently written. No novel or romance 
could be more efficient in its effect, on the imagination, or the affections 
of the heart; while its facts and incidents are in keeping with the evan- 
gelical records. It is a book which one would read again and again, for 
the delightful and sanctifying emotions it awakens in one who feels and 
realizes his personal interest, in the " story of the eross." 
Front the Dispatch, Richmond, Yd. 

"Jesus was man, as well as God ! In this book He is seen, conversed 
with, eaien with ashman!" Ihe book presents him in the social and 
moral relations of life, with exemplary fidelity to.the Scripture narrative, 
and yet with a freshness which falls upon the mind like a new and thrill- 
ing narrative, and a life-likeness in every lineament which we feel, must 
be true to the original. In truth, the readers, no matter how conversant 
with the sacred writings, is drawn along with breathless interest, and the 
very depths of his heart reached and stirred into uncontrollable emotion. 
Outside of the Holy Gospels themselves, we have never seen so moving 
a picture of the life of the Man of Sorrow, nor any representation of the 
wondrous beauty of the Divine character, so touching and so true. 

This. I.ooh mil be sent by mail, postage paid, to any part of the United 
States on receipt of the price. 

jj^ 1 " Agents wanted in all parts of the country, to sell the above work- 
Terms liberal. Address, 

DAYTON & BURDICK, ^ 

IVo. 29 ANN STREET, N. Y.7 (t^f 




A PLAN 



OF 



BBOTHEBLY COPAETNEKSHIP 



NORTH AND SOUTH, 



FOR THE 



JPtsnfnl (Btthttin a,f Slahrj. 




NEW YORK : 
DAYTON AND BURDICK, 

29 ANN STREET. 

1856. 



tf 



A PLAN 

OF 

BROTHERLY COPARTNERSHIP, 



In whatever lands beyond the sea, the American citizen 
may sojourn, he carries with him the glowing sentiment of 
his country's greatness and capacity for mighty deeds. He 
carries with him its vast dimensions, as one would carry in 
his pocket a two-feet rule. He sometimes puts all the 
great rivers of Europe together between two banks, and 
measures against their united volume the giant Mississippi. 
He stretches the line of his country's length across the Eu- 
ropean Continent, from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, 
and from the Straits of Dover to the Bosphorous, and bids 
the bystanders note the results of the comparison. Now 
and then, he demonstrates to some patriotic Briton, how 
the whole of England might be put into Lake Michigan, 
leaving ample room for navigation on every side. Is the 
Frenchman or German proud of his native land ; he sug- 
gests that both France and Prussia might be set down in 
the single State of Texas, and still leave territory enough 
within its boundaries to make a kingdom as large as Bel- 



4 UNION" FOR EMANCIPATION. 

gium. But it is not what nature has doue to make a home 
for the mightiest nation on earth, that constitutes the 
proudest boast of the American, on either side of the At- 
lantic. He insists that the institutions of his country have 
done far more than nature for its greatness and glory ; that 
these have developed the energies of its people to an unpar- 
alleled capacity, while they operate with resistless attrac- 
tion upon the industrial populations of Europe, drawing 
them in a gulf-stream of emigration to the United States. 
It is what his countrymen have done and are doing to make 
the moral grandeur of the nation commensurate with its 
rivers, mountains, lakes, prairies, and all its boundless na- 
tional resources, that fills his heart with honest pride and 
inspires his anticipations of a glorious future. He watches 
its long-reaching strides in the race of science and civiliza- 
tion with the old powers of Christendom. He sees it dis- 
tancing one of them almost yearly in population and every 
other element of national strength. If the winters of three 
score years and ten have whitened his locks, he remembers 
when the whole population of the American Union did not 
equal numerically the present inhabitants of the State of 
New York. The little family of States which set out on 
its career when he was a boy, has become a commonwealth 
of thirty-one nations ; six of which contain each as many 
inhabitants as Denmark, and one, a larger number than 
Holland. Of all who speak the English language around 
the globe, he dwells most frequently and complacently upon 
the expansive and irresistible energy and genius of the 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 5 

Anglo-Saxon race. He maintains that this race is to give 
to the world the highest manifestations of these innate 
qualities on the American continent, as the only compact 
territory fitted by its magnitude and character to develop 
and employ them. Already there are more of that race on 
this continent than in Europe. The census of 1860 will 
show a greater population in the United States than in the 
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Thirty-five 
years ago, the whole State of Illinois did not contain as 
many inhabitants as one of the third-rate manufacturing 
towns in England ; now it numbers at least a million, or as 
many as one of the larger principalities of Germany. 

While the United States have thus expanded in territory 
and population, they have made equal progress in the ac- 
quisition of other elements of national strength. They 
have more mileage of Railway in operation than all other 
countries of the world put together ; more in the single 
State of New York than there is in the whole of France; 
more north of the Ohio than in all the British realms. In 
commerce, the Union is running neck and neck with France, 
and is only second to Great Britain. Its exports have 
more than doubled since 1850, and must reach the annual 
amount of $500,000,000 by 1860, if it maintains its present 
ratio of increase. Including its lake, river, and canal nav- 
igation, it has doubtless more tonnage employed than all 
the nations of Europe put together. Containing within 
itself all the producing climates and soils of the earth, it 
grows abundantly all kinds of grain, grass, and fruit known 



6 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

to Europe, and, in addition to these, cotton, rice, and tobac- 
co, which that continent cannot raise, and which constitute 
one-half of the domestic produce exported from the United 
States. Its ports on the Pacific are within twelve days' 
reach, by its steam marine, of the most thickly peopled re- 
gions of Eastern Asia ; whilst its Atlantic ports are within 
the same distance from Europe ; thus, with equally out- 
stretched hands, taking hold of the trade of both continents 
of the Old World. The Pacific Railroad only is needed 
to connect them by the silken ligament of commerce across 
the bosom of the American Union ; bringing London with- 
in thirty days' journey of the eastern ports of China. By 
the Panama railway and other Americanizing agencies in 
Central America, a powerful cordon of commerce and civil- 
ization is surrounding the whole of Mexico, and preparing 
a frontier for our nation far beyond the Southern boundary 
of that decadent Republic, and drawing its disorganized 
States into the sisterhood of our confederation. 

The political compact by which thirty-one almost inde- 
pendent Republics are connected in one great Union, is 
admirably adapted for the harmonious confederation of all 
the civilized States that could be erected from Hudson's 
Bay to Patagonia. So long as each shall retain its present 
prerogatives of sovereignty, and be allowed its present 
scope and margin for revolving upon its own axis ; for mak- 
ing all the laws and regulations necessary for the well-being 
of its own citizens ; for incorporating in its institutions their 
customs, ideas, language, &o. j in a word, so long as Mas- 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 7 

achusetts may be so different from Mississippi, and Cal- 
ifornia from Connecticut, the bonds of the American Con- 
federacy need not weakened, though it should embrace all 
the populations in the Western Hemisphere. It would not 
be even indispensably necessary that they should all be of 
the same race, language, or religion. Those States most 
widely severed by distance would be most strongly bound 
together by the necessity of each others' productions. If 
each would eschew monarchy, and consent to one federal 
custom-house system, coinage, postal organization, Army 
and Navy, Supreme Court of Appeals, and official inter- 
course with foreign nations, it might be as sovereign in its 
independence as any State could wish. With all these 
rights and prerogatives guarantied to every one of the 
great family of States, there would be no serious danger 
of its harmony being disturbed, from the accession of any 
number of new members, from North or South. If the 
American flag, as it floats on the ocean breeze, should show 
to the Old World one hundred stars, instead of thirty-one, 
in the year 1900, that emblasoned constellation might rep- 
resent a federal harmony more complete and peaceful than 
it ever has done since it numbered but the " Old Thirteen." 
Notwithstanding all the vehement agitation and sectional 
bickerings that exist at the present moment, take away the 
single disturbing element of Slavery, and it will be conced- 
ed by every candid mind, that the unity of sentiment, inter- 
est and institutions is far greater, now that the Union has 
extended to the Pacific, than it was before it had crossed the 



8 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

Mississippi, or even the Ohio. The old party divisions and 
struggles in connection with Protective Tarifs, Sub-treas- 
uries, National Bank, Internal Improvements, Federalism, 
and State-rights polity, and other questions, have almost 
entirely disappeared. The intercourse between the several 
States is incalculably more intimate now than it was in 
1800. The sentiment and fact of oneness would be infinite- 
ly greater with thirty-one than with thirteen, were it not 
for the existence of Slavery alone. 

While the American Union gives to every State such a 
latitude of liberty to act for itself, to be such a complete 
sovereignty, in almost every faculty of independence, still it 
is capable of acting through the Federal Congress with a 
decision as instantaneous, and with an energy as concentra- 
ted as an autocracy or despotism itself, in any sudden con- 
tingency, involving the defence of the nation against foreign 
aggression. If the allied Powers of the rest of the world 
should rise against it in arms, its Central Government could 
do nearly all that the Czar of the Russias could do in a 
similar case of invasion. Were New York or New Orleans 
in imminent danger of being bombarded and burnt by the 
fleets of England and France, it would have full power to 
sink every American merchant ship in port in the entrance 
of the harbor, to save the city from destruction, without 
consulting captain or owner. If the emergency required 
such an exercise of power, it could force every man capable 
of bearing arms into the service of the country ; take posses- 
sion of railroads ; cut down the choicest trees, level the cost- 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 9 

liest edifices of towns and cities. More than this; if the allied 
enemies of the nation should concentrate their forces against 
the Southern States, and threaten to subjugate the entire 
country, through the weakness of slavery, our Federal Con- 
gress, by an act as decisive and peremptory as the decrees 
of a Nicholas or a Nebuchadnezzar, would have power to 
free every slave in the Union, and thus make him its friend 
and defender, instead of a dangerous foe. Of course, all 
the parties owning the property thus appropriated or des- 
troyed would demand and receive an equitable indemnifica- 
tion for its loss. 

The financial ability of the nation gives it a pre-eminent 
position among the great Powers of Christendom. The en- 
ormous expenses of past wars, and the cost of military 
armaments in time of peace, have bought some of them to 
the very brink of bankruptcy, and imposed a fearful burden 
upon the rest. For several years past, the annual deficit of 
Austria, in consequence of these expenses, has been more 
than half of the entire amount raised by -the United States. 
The mere annual interest of the debt of Great Britian is 
more than twice the whole sum appropriated by our Gov- 
ernment to all its departments of expenditure. That 
Power spends more on its army and navy, by ten millions 
of dollars a year, than the public income of the United 
States. The whole annual expenditure of Great Britain is 
about $20 per head for every man, woman and child of its 
populatiom'whilst that of the United States is not $2 50 
per capita. To illustrate the difference of these burdens, 



10 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

and the relative capacities of the two countries for some 
new and vast enterprize, or for a race on the high-road of 
progress, England starts with a weight of 40 lbs. per sub- 
ject on its back, while the United States only have 5 lbs. 
per inhabitant to carry on the national shoulders. Not- 
withstanding the great wealth of England, it may count its 
millions of subjects within the British Isles, from whose 
poverty scarcely any revenue can be wrung ; especially 
since the Temperance movement commenced in Ireland. 
On the other hand, nearly all the inhabitants of the United 
States produce revenue by the consumption of dutiable arti- 
cles. Travel through the Western States, and you will find 
thousands upon thousands emerging from the log-cabins into 
elegant framed houses, to be supplied with fashionable furni- 
ture and articles of ornament and luxury ; all yielding rev- 
nue for the Federal Government . Every factory girl in 
New England, who buys a silk dress, with the annual 
amount of ribbon and lace she deems necessary to her prop- 
er adornment, contributes more to our national treasury 
than the English Chancellor of the Exchequer receives from 
fifty potato-eating peasants in Ireland who have signed, 
and still adhere to, Father Mathew's temperance pledge. 
The Irish and German immigrants, the very first year of 
their life in the United States, become national revenue-pro- 
ducers, and doubtless pay more of it here in one month than 
they did in a whole year in their native countries. At the 
present ratio of increase, the population of the Union must 
number 30,000,000 in 1860, every individual of whom will 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. \\ 

be a contributor to the public income. It will be as easy 
in that year to raise $100,000,000, as it is to raise $60,- 
000,000, at the present moment. 

There is no nation on earth that has such a vast public 
domain as the United States. STor are there any govern- 
ment lands in the world that command such a ready sale 
and produce so much annual income as ours. Railroads are 
intersecting them in almost every direction, enhancing their 
their value, and bringing them into a speedy market. This 
landed estate of the Union contains more than 160,000,000, 
of acres, which, if well husbanded, should produce $1200 - 
000,000. 

Possessing all these present and prospective elements of 
power, it is natural and inevitable, that the American 
citizen, at home and abroad, should feel that the time has 
come when his country can do a great thing before the na- 
tions, should it put forth all the strength of its Samson 
sinews. The Governments and people of Europe perceive 
and admit this capacity of the American Union, and fre- 
quently call it the mighty Republic of the Western World. 
In a word, there seems to be an expectation prevalent 
throughout Christendom that our nation will soon do some 
great thing ; that it will show all the giant strength of its 
young manhood in some vast undertaking. It has stood 
quietly by and seen the foremost Powers of Europe put 
forth their strength in a tremendous war, in which at least 
100,000 human beings were sacrificed, and $1,500,000,000 
lavished upon the work of human destruction. England 



12 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

has expended $500,000,000 in the vague and fruitless 
struggle ; France as much more ; and Russia an almost 
equal sum. It is now the turn of this great continental 
family of States to do something large— something to 
enhance its estimation in the eyes of the world ; to increase 
its political power at home and abroad, and to strengthen 
and perpetuate its bonds of union. What shall it do to 
secure these objects ? Shall it go to war with a coalition 
of European Powers ? A victorious conflict with a world 
in arms would not be so glorious in the estimation of the 
other nations of Christendom, as the extirpation of that 
great domestic foe, which is arraying one section of the Re- 
public in the bitterest antagonism to the other, and filling 
it with the malignant breathings of malice and mutiny. The 
system of Slavery is an enemy which imperils the life of our 
beloved Union far more than a world of foreign foes could 
do. It turns its harmonies into grating discords. It engulfs 
its fraternities in a sea of fierce and endless agitation. It is 
pitting the two great divisons of the country against each 
other in a struggle embittered with every element of strife. 
The halls of that Federal Congress, which should represent 
the unity of the Nation, echo for session after session with 
fiery and inflaming speeches, harsh invective, cutting retorts 
and taunts that sting and poison the wound they make. 
In ecclesiastical assemblies, at the meetings of benevolent or 
educational societies, even in social circles at private houses, 
the great disturber is present to stir up dissension. Where- 
ver " the sons of God come together," or the sons of men, 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. J3 

this Satan of discord is sure to come with them. Hardly a 
minister of the Gospel, or even a school-master can be set- 
tled over a congregation or school, North or South, without 
starting up this evil genius. Not a square mile of land can 
be brought into the Union without a struggle between sla- 
very and freedom. Threatenings of disunion and civil war, 
and other disasters attending the breaking up of this great 
confederation, are becoming more and more frequent and 
familiar. There is no ingenuity nor power in human legis- 
lation that can silence or stay the tempest of these angry 
dissensions until their source shall be extinguished. They 
will wax louder and fiercer, from year to year, in spite of 
all compromises and concessions. God himself connot make 
peace with slavery, nor can He give peace to this nation, 
while it exists within its borders. It will go on, " casting 
up mire and dirt," and foaming with furious contortions 
under the awakening conscience of the surrounding world. 
All the efforts to confine it to the space which it now 
blights with its curse, will only make its rage more desper- 
ate. More than fifty years of the nation's life have passed 
away, and we have no union yet. Apparently we are fur- 
ther from it than ever. The recent events in Congress and 
Kanzas denote, beyond all foregoing transactions, how wide 
and deep the abyss has grown that divides the North and 
South. There are no two independent Powers in Europe 
seemingly in such danger of deadly collision as these two 
sections of our Republic. Their criminations and recrimi- 
nations, are growing more and more malignant and bitter ; 



14 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

and bloodshed and civil war are threatened, and expected 
in some quarters, with but a slight show of affliction at the 
catastrophe. It would be a mockery of every honest con- 
ception of political harmouy, to call this condition of things 
a Union. We never had a greater variety of political or- 
ganizations than at this moment. But not one of them 
pretends to present a plan or platform that shall bridge 
this broad abyss between the North and South, and unite 
them in the oneness of fraternal fellowship. Not one of 
them proposes to put its hand upon the only source of the 
nation's disease and eradicate it root and branch. " Non- 
extension " will never work out the non-existence of slavery, 
It has already grasped nearly every acre of this continent 
on which it can live ; and has territory enough without 
Kanzas for fifteen millions of slaves, if it were peopled with 
as many of them per square mile as South Carolina. 

Such is the insidious enemy that is sapping the founda- 
tions of our beloved Union, and threatening it with dissolu- 
tion and utter destruction. All that is precious in its exist- 
ence may depart, like a human soul, leaving its physical 
form apparently intact. It is not the legislative inter-link- 
ing of thirty-one States by the bonds of the national Consti- 
tution or Congress that breathes life into the Union, and 
keeps it throbbing within its bosom with healthful pulsations; 
any more than it is the physical mechanism of the human 
body that creates and perpetuates in it the liviug spirit 
which animates the whole. It is not the federal mechanism 
by which these States are connected that can perpetuate that 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 15 

social existence so dear to every American patriot. A 
living spirit of brotherly love and sympathy, which laws can 
neither create nor preserve, must be kept burning and beat- 
ing within the heart of the corporate nation. A sentiment 
of oneness must prevade its members in every contingency 
and crisis of its experience. Fraternal memories and affini- 
ties, kindly and ' spontaneous leanings of the heart toward 
each other must under-breathe, over-act and out-run all 
federal legislation and relationships in making them "di- 
verse like the waves, but one like the sea." This spirit is 
the living soul of the Union. In his own and other lands, 
the true American thus regards it. He dwells most fondly 
and frequently upon those choice passages of his country's 
history which have been most brightly illuminated by the 
manifestations of this spirit. The long trial and struggle 
of the Revolution ; the heroic partnerships in suffering and 
privation which endeared the " Old Thirteen" to each other, 
and enriched them with common and immortal memories ; 
these constitute to his mind the vital bonds that hold this 
great family of States together by ligaments stronger than 
all the letters of the Federal Constitution and laws. All 
the external enemies which the nation has confronted, from 
the first day of its recognized existence, have aimed their 
weapons merely at its physical constitution. They essayed 
only to destroy its political organism. Their efforts tended 
to strengthen its inner life ; to attach its federal members to 
each other by new bonds of sympathy and brotherhood. 
But slavery strikes immediately at the vital principle, at 



16 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

the very soul of the Union. This it threatens to extinguish, 
leaving the frame-work of the great confederacy lying as 
lifeless on the scite of its structure as thirty-one chain links 
of iron coiled on the frosty earth. It has already made de- 
plorable progress in this surreptitious and fatal work. The 
crisis has come — the time for united and irresistible action. 
How shall this monstrous domestic enemy be met and con- 
quered ! Just as the gigantic foe of the young Republic 
was met in 1*116 — by the most brotherly and energetic co- 
operation of all sections of the Union ; in that sentiment of 
oneness to which the men of the Revolution left the red 
tokens of their devotion on the battle-fields of a seven years' 
war. 

The utter extirpation of Slavery from American soil, 
should be achieved in a way and in a spirit that should 
attach all the members of the confederacy to each other by 
stronger bonds than had ever existed between them ; which 
should bequeath to their numerous posterity of States a rich 
legacy of precious memories, deepening and perpetuating 
their sense of relationship, as co-heirs of the noblest chapters 
of Amercan history. There is a magnanimous and glorious 
way by which this terrible evil in our midst may be removed, 
so as to produce these happy associations and results. 
That is, by a fraternal union and co-operation of all the 
States of our Republic in emancipating it fully and forever 
from this distructive system, at whatever cost it may be 
peacefully and honorably effected. In the first place, such 
a copartnership is indispensable to the work, for its achieve- 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 17 

ment will require the concentrated energies of the mightiest 
nation ever erected on the face of the globe. When we 
come to the final tug of an undertaking, the like of which 
no nation on earth ever accomplished, no State, town or 
village, from California to Canada, can be spared. Every 
praying heart and willing hand will be needed for the 
grand effort. 

There is but one way by which the whole nation can take 
upon its shoulders the total extinction of slavery. That is, 
by compensating the slave holders, out of the public treas- 
ury or the public domain, for the act of manumission. 

Let us face the cost of this vast pecuniary transaction at 
the outset. Would the undertaking devolve a burden upon 
the nation which would exceed its financial ability, and 
prove onerous to its population ? Taking all the slaves in 
the Union, young and old, sick and disabled, $250 per head 
must be admitted as an equitable average price. Three 
millions and a half, at this valuation, would amount to 
$8*15,000,000 ; a much smaller sum than England and 
France expended in the recent war with Russia. Even 
suppose, what could hardly be possible, that all the South- 
ern States would accept this pecuniary consideration, and 
emancipate their slaves simultaneously and at once, the 
annual interest of the whole amount would be $52,500,000 
at 6 per cent. This interest would not be half the sum 
appropriated every year by Great Britain to her army and 
navy in time of peace. If the population and wealth of the 
nation continue to increase at the ratio of the last ten years, 



18 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

its ordinary revenue must reach $100,000,000, in 1860, 
and advance by several millions annually after that date. 
Thus, if emancipation took effect in 1860, the. natural in- 
come of the nation would yield about $50,000,000, for the 
current expenses of the Government, besides the interest of 
the debt contracted for freeing the country from slavery. 
With due economy, the people would be burdened with no 
more taxation than at the present moment. 

The Free States ought to be moved by a sense of high 
moral obligation, as well as considerations of enlightened 
expediency, not only to accept, but to offer this mode of 
exterminating that perilous evil which is slowly eating 
through the life-strings of the Union. It must be confessed 
that the North participated in the inhuman traffic that 
planted slavery in the Southern States with all the unscru- 
pulous greed of gain that marks the chattelization of human 
beings. After the importation of slaves from Africa was 
suppressed, a vast majority of the people of the Free States, 
up to 1840, resisted all active opposition to Slavery with 
more persecuting zeal than the land-owners of England 
manifested against the movement for the abolition of the 
corn-laws. Pulpit, Press and Platform, from Maine to 
Missouri, seemed almost unanimous in the determination to 
silence all agitation of the subject. The few men and wo- 
men who had the nerve of truth and righteousness to de- 
nounce the system as a sin and curse, were branded with 
obloquy, and regarded as outlaws or fanatics, equally dan- 
gerous to the peace of the Christian church and the safety 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 19 

of the nation. Hardly twenty years have elapsed, since 
they were mobbed under the windows of Fanueil Hall. 
Within the shadow of Bunker Hill, at its eve-tide length, 
they were hunted like felons, and worse than felons, by 
their own fellow citizens. 

For the first half century of the nation's life, the preju- 
dice against color in the North was so general, implacable 
and tyrannical, and the treatment of the African race so 
degrading and oppressive, that a candid mind would have 
been obliged to infer, that the victims of such dispositions 
and deportment were regarded as only fitted for slavery. 
Even at this moment, one or two of the Free States have 
" Black Laws " in force, which exclude from their borders 
a free colored man, as if he were worse than the leper once 
compelled to wander outside the gates of Jurusalem ■ which 
virtually sells him as a brute, if he persists in his attempt to 
make himself a humble and honest home in the obscurest 
corner of their vast and thinly-peopled territory. In still a 
larger number of Northern States, one of which boasts its 
Charter Oak, and two hundred years of Puritan nurture in 
the principles of civil liberty, the slightest tinge of African 
blood drives a very saint in virtue from the ballot box, and 
forbids him that right of suffrage which the most vicious 
foreigner may easily obtain. 

For fifty years, the most able and astute defenders of 
Slavery have been Northern men residing in the South. 
They have filled many of its pulpits, and the editorial chairs 
of its public press. They have made their way to the helm 



20 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

of its commercial enterprise and literary institutions. They 
have become its leading merchants, speculators and factors. 
They have supplied nearly all its school teachers ; thus 
commanding the current of popular education. Having a 
character to establish as "Northern men with Southern 
principles," they have far outrun the native slaveholders 
themselves in zeal for slavery. They have elaborated the 
most subtle and wicked arguments to sustain it. Many of 
them have exhibited an ingenuity in distorting the Holy 
Scriptures to this end, which Southern born theologians 
have never been able to equal. The most heartless sophis- 
tries to make the teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles 
sanction " the peculiar institution " of the South, have been 
the inventions of men born in the highest latitudes of civil 
liberty in the North. Thousands of them have become 
slave-owners on their own account, and thousands more 
hireling and relentless drivers of slaves for others. By cor- 
respondence and social intercourse, they have kept up among 
their relatives and friends in the Free States, a countless 
standing army of apologists for the system, of almost equal 
zeal and bitterness. 

Up to the present moment, the North has been a com- 
mercial and equal partner with the South in all the material 
values or pecuniary results produced by slavery. In the 
first place, the great southern staples, Cotton, Tobacco and 
Rice, with their vast valuation, constituting virtually the 
commercial currency between America and Europe, have 
mostly passed through the hands of Northern merchants 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 21 

and factors, enriching them with lucrative profits. Then 
slavery rendered the Southern States dependent upon the 
North for all the manufactured articles they used ; from 
parlor books to kitchen brooms, from beaver hats for the 
master to the coarsest chip hats for the slave ; from pen- 
knives to ploughs. Nearly all the goods they used were 
either manufactured or imported for them by the North. 
Their teas, coffees and other foreign productions either came 
to them through New York, Philadelphia, or Boston, or 
were brought to them direct from across the sea in Northern 
ships. The factories and ships of the Eastern States and 
the fertile prairie lands of the West, teemed with the indus- 
trial activities which these important staples employed and 
rewarded. What three millions of slaves grew under the lash 
in the South, made a continuous and profitable business for 
at least twice that number of freemen in the North. The 
latter, by that species of compromise for which it has been 
distinguished, grasped at the lion's share of the dividends 
of this commercial partnership. It coveted to sell to the 
Southern States, far more than it purchased from them. 
If they would only consent to a high protective tariff, which 
would give their market for manufactures exclusively to the 
North, anti-slavery agitation in the Free States should be 
put down and extinguished. The mobbing of "abolition 
agitators" in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other 
Northern cities was a part of this business transaction — a 
small instalment of the purchase price of Protection. Each 
of these acts of violence was one of the pieces of silver paid 



22 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

for Southern trade. Take it all in all, probably two thirds 
of " all the wealth that sinews bought and sold " have pro- 
duced on this continent, have accrued to the States north of 
Mason's and Dixon's Line, as the pecuniary result of their 
silent partnership in the system of human bondage. 

A candid, impartial statesmen, looking at the legislative 
history of the United States, from a distant stand point, 
would be shut up to the conclusion, that slavery was here 
accepted and defended as a national institution. Let him 
read simply the enactments of Congress, and this conviction 
would be inevitable. Every aggression of the slave-power 
upon the Free States has found originators or abettors 
among their most distinguished Senators. The notorious 
Twenty-first Rule, which trampled under foot the first right 
of the people, and spurned their petitions unread from the 
table, was generally moved by a Northern representative. 
The Fugitive Slave Bill, the most aggravated infringment 
of the rights of personal liberty which the Free States have 
been called to endure, will go down to the last day of the 
nation's existence identified with the name aud fame of 
Daniel Webster, as its father and founder. The aid his 
vast influence and talents gave to it will make him its 
originator, in the view of future generations, though he may 
not have interpolated a line in the text of the Bill. The 
Nebraska Bill will go down to posterity stamped with its 
Northern origin. It is doubtful whether any senator in the 
American Congress, except Stephen A. Douglass, could have 
achieved the passage of that measure. No man, unques- 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 23 

tionably, in the nation, except himself, possessed the extra- 
ordinary capacities and characteristics requisite to that 
achievement. Was he an isolated traitor to the North ? did 
he stand alone in this act ? No ; he was sustained by Lewis 
Cass, who stands at the head and front of living American 
statesmen in European estimation, for his distinguished abil- 
ity and long experience. Nearly one half of the senators 
from the Free States voted for the Bill. In the House of 
Representatives, those States have a large majority ; yet 
the Bill passed that body. 

By popular sentiment, commercial partnership, religious 
communion, and legislative action, the Free States have 
lived in guilty complicity with the system of slavery from 
the foundation of the Republic. It is far too late for them 
to cleanse their garments of the stains of that guilt by the 
flames and fumigation of indignant emotion. Tears of re- 
pentance can only do the work, followed by acts proving 
it to be sincere and honest. It is in vain for them to plead 
that the seductions of the slave-power were too strong for 
their love of truth and righteousness ; to charge upon the 
tempter their own lack of virtue. The mother of our race 
ventured to present this plea in extenuation of her guilt, and 
to saddle her sin upon the serpent. But the God of justice 
did not accept it ; nor will He in the case of the Free 
States against the South. Before His holy eyes, before all 
the civilized communities of mankind around us, their long 
and aggravated participation in slavery has nationalized it ; 
has drawn it to the bosom of the whole Union as with a 



24 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

cart rope. In view of this wicked complicity, the system 
has been unsectionalized, and allowed to cast as dark a 
shadow on the highest hill top of Vermont as upon the 
lowest rice swamp of Carolina. Before God and man, the 
North deserves to be fined heavily for its dereliction of duty 
to freedom. It deserves it richly, as an act of penal justice 
to humanity. It should be made to pay its share of the 
cost of extinguishing slavery, whatever pecuniary expense 
it may involve. 

Motives of enlightened patriotism, as well as of justice 
and necessity, should unite all sections of the Republic in 
the annihilation of its only enemy, which endangers its ex- 
istence, destroys its unity, and paralyzes its influence upon 
the rest of the world. All the powers of Europe arrayed 
in arms against the American Union could not subject it to 
the peril in which it lives by fostering in its heart the ever- 
lasting antagonism and weakness of slavery. All other 
sources of sectional jealousy and controversy have disapear- 
ed, or have been swallowed up in this great seething gulf of 
discord. There is no ingenuity nor power in human legisla- 
tion that can silence or stay the tempest of these angry dis- 
sensions until their source shall be extinguished. They will 
wax louder and fiercer, from year to year, in spite of all 
compromises and concessions. God himself cannot make 
peace with slavery, nor can He give peace to this nation, 
while it exists within its borders., It will go on, " casting 
up mire and dirt," and foaming with furious contortions 
under the awakening conscience of the surrounding world 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 25 

All the efforts to confine it to the space which it now blights 
with its curse, will only make its rage more desperate. 
More than fifty years of the nation's life have passed away, 
and we have no Union yet. Apparently we are further 
from it than ever. The recent events in Congress and in 
Kansas denote, beyond all foregoing transactions, how wide 
and deep the abyss has grown that divides the North and 
South. There are no two^independent Powers in Europe 
seemingly in such danger of deadly collision as these two 
sections of our Republic. Their criminations and recrimi- 
nations are growing more and more malignant and bitter ; 
and bloodshed and civil war are threatened, and expected 
in some quarters, with but a slight show of affliction at the 
catastrophe. It would be a mockery of every honest con- 
ception of political harmony, to call this condition of things 
a union. 

No measure short of the total extinction of slavery can 
establish a Union on this Continent worth saving ; and that 
is an achievement beyond the power of any section, or sect- 
ional party, though it should enrol in its ranks every voter 
north of Mason and Dixon's Line. We never had a great- 
er variety of political organizations than at this moment. 
But not one of them pretends to present a plan or platform 
that shall bridge this broad abyss between the North and 
South, and unite them in the oneness of fraternal fellowship. 
Not one of them proposes to put its hand upon the only 
source of the nation's disease and eradicate it root and 
branch. " Non-extension " will never work out the non- 



26 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

existence of slavery. It has already grasped nearly every 
acre of this continent on which it can live ; and has terri- 
tory enough without Kansas for fifteen millions of slaves, 
if it were peopled with as many of them per square mile as 
South Carolina. 

The extinction of slavery would make the nation a mighty 
and multitudinous unit — one in interest, one in sentiment 
and public policy. The power of its attraction would be 
increased ten fold ; attaching State to State by new bonds 
of brotherhood, and drawing into its embrace, by the peace- 
ful ties of sympathy, all the North Americau populations 
that now surround it. We should have no more " Missouri 
Compromises," Fugitive Slave Bills, or Nebraska Bills. 
Mason and Dixon's Line would be erased forever. The 
birth and introduction of a new State would be a common 
and equal gladness to all scetions of the Union. We 
should have no more balance of power questions connected 
with the annexation of neighboring States, desirous of cast- 
ing in their lot with us as a nation. On whatever side they 
should gravitate into the Union, they would be welcome to 
North and South, East and West. 

We ought to exterminate slavery at once, at whatever 
pecuniary expense it might involve, as an act of enlightened 
policy towards the other nations of Christendom. In the 
midst of these revolutions and upturnings in the world, 
America cannot afford to hug slavery to her bosom another 
twenty-five years. She cannot afford to let the clanking of 
its fetters drown the speech of those great principles embo- 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 2? 

died in the Declaration of Independence at a time like the 
present. No human mind could conceive what America 
might do for the world in the next quarter of a century ; 
what hand of help she might extend to prostrate and des- 
pairing peoples ; what burning beacons she might raise 
along their pathway to civil freedom, if she would but now 
arise in her united might, and put away from her the sin, 
shame and schism of slavery. 

For even the material well being of the Union, it would 
be better to pay the annual interest of a thousand millions 
of dollars, rather than to permit slavery to have a lease to 
live another fifty years on this Continent. The nation would 
make money by its immediate extinction, even at that cost. 
The curse which degrades human labor, and palsies its sinews 
would be lifted from fifteen of the largest States of the Re- 
public. Their vast agricultural and mineral resources would 
be developed to a wealth beyond computation. The bar- 
rier which has so long shut out from their midst the enrich- 
ing industry of free sinews, would be leveled to the ground ; 
and they would soon be filled with energetic and intelligent 
populations from the Free States and from Europe. The 
increased value of their lands would augment the wealth of 
the whole nation. Buy of slavery at once ; foreclose its lease, 
and the Public Revenue would doubtless reach $100,000,- 
000 per annum in ten years, and constantly increase beyond 
that period, without including the income from the public 
lands. 

The only possible way by which the Free States can ac- 



28 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

quire the right to legislate for the extinction of slavery 
throughout the Union, is by compensating the slaveholders 
of the South for the act of manumission. If all the British 
Provinces in North America, and all Mexico, should be- 
come part and parcel of this Republic, and surround the 
South with a cordon of Free States six deep, the Constitu- 
tion would not give them one iota of power to vote the ex- 
termination of slavery in Virginia or Georgia, unless that 
power were acquired through this pecuniary arrangement. 
Unless this were adopted, the millions of Free State voters 
surrounding the area of slavery, from Newfoundland to 
Hudson's Bay, from Hudson's Bay to Oregon, and from 
Oregon to Yucatan, would be obliged to stand by with 
powerless ballots and watch the slow and silent working of 
their opinions alone upon Southern legislation. Not one of 
them could cast a vote directly upon the great question. 
But let the Free States say they are willing to bear their 
part of the expense of removing slavery from the Union, 
and they might bring the proposition before Congress this 
very session. 

National indemnification would be an act of liberal just- 
ice towards the Southern States, which would enable them 
to enter at once upon the great work of emancipation, from 
which they would doubtless shrink for a century, if they 
alone were obliged to bear all the burden of its cost. It 
would at once and forever silence that perpetual and pow- 
erful argument of their lips, that the Free States are plot- 
ting to rob them of their property ; to annihilate the great 
interest in which they think their all is staked. 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 29 

The pecuniary arrangement proposed would be an act of 
good policy, as well as of good will and necessity, on the 
part of the North towards the Southern States. It would 
hold them up from that bankruptcy or long and deep pros- 
tration which would result from their taking the whole 
weight of emancipation upon their own shoulders. Admit- 
ting, in the Southern sense, that the slaves represent de 
facto property, the value of 3,500,000, at $250 per head, 
taking young and old, sick and disabled, would be $875, 
000,000. The immediate and unconditional annihilation 
of this vast interest would bring as much pecuniary loss 
and as much poverty and distress upon the slave-holders of 
the South, as if that interest were sanctioned by the laws 
of God and humanity. Every slave has cost as much, or 
represents as much money, as if those laws did in very deed 
recognize and justify a property value in him. It would 
be a legal impossibility, or an act of legal injustice on the 
part of Southern legislatures, to repeal at once all their 
laws sanctioning this property, and to emancipate imme- 
diately and fully all the slaves in those States, without 
indemnifying their owners. What the fifteen States south 
of Mason and Dixon's Line cannot legally do, the thirty-one 
of the whole Union cannot justly accomplish. It would 
also be, or be deemed, pecuniarily impossible for the South- 
ern States to take upon themselves alone the burden of 
$875,000,000, for the emancipation of their slaves. 

National compensation would be an act which would put 
the Free States in a completely new attitude toward the 



30 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

South ; an attitude not of scorn, indignation, or supercilious 
repugnance, but a brother's posture and aspect, reaching a 
hand of help to his own mother's twin-born son, to enable 
him to throw off a burden which he himself had, by indi- 
rection, aided in binding to his neck. Even pagan nations, 
in their sanguinary wars with neighboring countries, have 
professed to hold the sword in one hand and the olive branch 
in the other. God himself makes conditions with the vilest 
sinner, and offers him peace and joy, like a river in this 
world, and His glorious heaven in the next, as the result of 
his sincere repentance. But in this long and fierce-waxing 
struggle with the South, we have not imitated Divine justice, 
nor that of unenlightened paganism. We have grasped a 
sword in each hand up to the present hour. We have never 
promised the Slave States any reward for their repentance ; 
we have never offered to do any thing for them, not even to 
give them the full communion of our sympathy, if they 
would put away from them this great sin in our eyes. 

National indemnification would not be a mere compromise, 
but an earnest and brotherly partnership between the North 
and South, in working out a glorious consummation, which 
would bless equally both sections of the Republic. The 
extinction of slavery, at every stage of this process, instead 
of dissevering, would unite the States by affinities and 
relationships that have never existed between them. A 
new spirit would be generated in the heart of the nation, 
and cover it like an atmosphere of fraternal amity. Such 
a spirit would be worth to the country twice the value of 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 31 

all the slaves in its borders. Without this spirit pervading 
the Union, the wrongs of the slaves can never be righted. 
Nothing but slavery itself, of the most atrocious stamp, 
could be worse for them than emancipation in the midst of 
a tempest of malignant passions, of fierce and fiery hate. 
Fearful and almost hopeless would be their condition, if the 
fetters of their physical bondage should be rent asunder in 
a thunder-burst of burning wrath. Of all parties to this 
great moral struggle, their well-being will be most depend- 
ent upon the prevalence of benevolent sentiments and frater- 
nal sympathies throughout the nation at the time of their 
manumission. 

The means at the command of the nation for the extinc- 
tion of slavery by the mode proposed, are ample. There is 
one source of revenue alone, not needed for the current ex- 
penses of the Government, which would be sufficient to 
emancipate all the slaves in the Union. This is the Public 
Domain of the United States. This landed estate of the 
nation, according to official estimate, contains, exclusive of 
the lands acquired from Mexico by the treaty of 1853, 
1,600,000,000 of acres. At the average of 75 cents per 
acre, they would yield $1,200,000,000. Admitting $250 
per head for the whole slave population to be a fair average 
price, taking infant and aged, sick and infirm, the 3,500, 
000 in the United States would amount to $875,000,000. 
Thus, the public lands would not only defray the expense 
of emancipating all these slaves, but would also yield a large 
surplus for their education and moral improvement. 



32 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

Did any nation ever have such an extent of territory as 
a free gift from Providence ? How could we more appro- 
priately recognize this gift, than by consecrating it to free- 
dom ? than by making it the ransom-price from slavery of 
all the chattelized human beings in the Union ? Wherein 
and how could they contribute more to the true dignity, 
harmony and well-being of the nation ? If not thus appro- 
priated in advance, they will be alienated from the Federal 
Government altogether. They will be frittered away in 
sectional bribes, or sources of Executive patronage, and 
thus become capital for political corruption — the pension 
money for partisan warfare. This is the very moment to 
arrest this squandering process, and to appropriate what 
remains of this public domain to some great object connect- 
ed with the peace and prosperity of the whole nation. The 
act, or even the certainty of emancipation, would greatly 
enhance the value of the public lands in all the Slave States ; 
thus producing the revenue necessary to accomplish the 
magnificent enterprise. 

The only action which it would be necessary to ask Con- 
gress to take in this matter at the outset, would be — 

To make a provision by law, that whenever any State of 
the Union, in which slavery now exists, shall decree the 
emancipation of all slaves, and the abolition of involuntary 
servitude, except for crime, within its borders, an exact 
enumeration shall be made, and for each and every slave 
thus emancipated, there shall be paid from the National 
Treasury to such State, for equitable distribution among 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 33 

the slaveholders, a certain sum of niouey, to be ascertained 
as Congress may direct ; and that the net revenue from all 
the future sales of the public lands, shall be appropriated 
exclusively to the emancipation of all the slaves in the 
United States in this manner. 

The prerogative of each individual State to retain or 
abolish slavery, remains untouched by the Congressional 
enactment proposed. Not the slightest form or aspect of 
Federal compulsion is assumed towards its sovereignty. The 
Central Government only makes a generous offer to each 
and every Southern State simultaneously. It leaves that 
State in the freest exercise of its sovereign will to accept 
or reject that offer. If it accepts, then the stipulated sum 
of money is paid to its appointed agent by the Government. 
That money is distributed by the State receiving it in its 
own way. 

Although this offer were made to all the Southern States 
individually, it is quite certain that they would not all ac- 
cept it simultaneously. One State, after some hesitation, 
would lead the way, and be followed one after the other by 
the rest. Doubtless the one containing the smallest number 
of slaves would be the first to try the experiment of eman- 
cipation. This would be Delaware, which has only about 
2000 at this moment. These, at $250 per head, would 
only amount to $500,000. The whole revenue from the 
Public lands in 1855 was $1 1,49*7,000. The odd dollars 
of this sum above eleven millions, would have freed Dela- 
ware from Slavery. By the census of 1850, Arkansas had 



34 



UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 



about 41,000 slaves. Thus the income from the public 
lands last year would have emancipated all these human 
beings, and have added Arkansas to the Free States of the 
Union. The surplus revenue now in the Treasury of the 
United States, mostly derived from these lands, would eman- 
cipate all the slaves in Missouri. We might go on in this 
way, freeing a slave State once in two years, without adding 
to the taxation of the Union. 

Taking the number of Slaves in 1850, according to the 
Census, the Southern States would receive the following 
sums, allowing them $250 per head for the emancipation of 
their slave population : — 



States. 


No. of Slaves. 


Compensation. 


Virginia, 


. 472,528 


$118,132,000 


South Carolina, 


384,984 


96,246,000 


Georgia, 


381,682 


95,420,500 


Alabama, 


. 342,892 


85,723,000 


Mississippi, . 


309,878 


77,470,500 


North Carolina, 


. 288,548 


72,137,000 


Louisiana, 


244,809 


61,202,250 


Tennessee, 


239,460 


59,865,000 


Kentucky, 


210,981 


52,745,250 


Maryland, 


90,368 


22,592,000 


Missouri, 


87,422 


21,855,500 


Texas, 


58,161 


14,540,250 


Arkansas, 


47,100 


11,775,000 


Florida, 


. 39,309 


9,287,250 


Dist. Columbia, 


3,687 


921,750 


Delaware, 


2,290 


572,500 


The amounts thus r 


eceived by the 


several Southern 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 35 

States would not represent all the pecuniary compensation 
which they would realize from emancipation. The extinct- 
ion of slavery would open the flood gates of free labor and 
its fertilizing and ingenious industry. Yast numbers of in- 
telligent and vigorous men from the North and from 
Europe would pour into Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Missouri and other Southern States, and create 
a great demand and value for their lands. Those in Mis- 
souri, for instance, would advance to the price at which the 
same quality is now sold in Iowa. Real estate in Kentucky 
would rise to the Ohio standard. Land in Virginia would 
sell for as much as that of the same capacity of production 
in Pennsylvania.. It would be a moderate estimate to as- 
sume, that emancipation, as soon as declared, would double 
the value of all the lands in the Southern States. This in 
most cases would constitute a larger pecuniary consider- 
ation than the several amounts of money received for the 
manumission of their slaves, as will be seen from the fol- 
lowing figures, taking the valuation of their farms as given 
by the Census of 1850. 



States. 


Additional val- 


Money Compen- r 


?ot. Am. for 




ue of Farms. 


sation. 


each Stave. 


Virginia, 


8216,401,543 


$118,132,000 


$708 


South Carolina, 


82,431,684 


96,246,000 


464 


Georgia, 


95,753,445 


95,420,500 


500 


Alabama, 


64,323,224 


85,723,000 


437 


Mississippi, 


54,738,634 


77,470,500 


391 


North Carolina, 


47,891,766 


72,137,000 


485 


Louisiana, 


75,814,398 


61,202,250 


560 



36 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 





Additional val- 


Money Compen- Tot. Am. foi 


States. 


ue of Farms. 


sation. 


each slave. 


Tennessee, 


97,851,212 


59,685,000 


657 


Kentucky, 


155,021,262 


52,745,250 


984 


Maryland, 


87,178,545 


22,592,000 


1,214 


Missouri, 


63,225,543 


21,855,500 


982 


Texas, 


16,550,008 


14,540,250 


534 


Arkansas, 


15,265,245 


11,775,000 


574 


Florida, 


6,323,109 


9,287,250 


400 


Dist. Columbia, 


1,730,460 


921,750 


720 


Delaware, 


18,S80,031 


572,500 


850 



Those States whose lands would be the most speedily 
and largely increased in value by the act of Emancipation, 
are Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mis- 
souri, because their climate and soil are the best adapted 
to free white labor. If slavery were abolished within 
their borders, the streams of emigration from the Eastern 
States and from Europe would pour in upon them, occupy- 
ing and fertilizing their waste or exhausted lands, and dif- 
fusing the genius and vigor of agricultural and mechanical 
skill and industry throughout the community. All their 
silent or idle rivers and streams would be set to the music 
of machinery ; and manufactories for working into full 
value the products of their fields, mines and forests, would 
line their valleys, each surrounded by a white and thrifty 
village. The Atlantic ports of the South would be whitened 
by the canvass of all nations, and ships laden with emi- 
grants from England, France and Germany, would disem- 
bark their freights of human industry on their wharves. 
One day's journey by railroad from Norfolk, Wilmington, 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 37 

Charleston, Savannah or Mobile, would take the European 
farmer to the place of his destination. With all the at- 
tractions which those States would possess, if freed from 
slavery, it must seem a moderate estimate to every candid 
mind, to assume that their lands would be merely doubled 
in value by the act of emancipation. Admitting this small 
ratio of enhancement, we have two positive pecuniary con- 
siderations operating upon every slave State in favor of 
emancipation. For example, the act by doubling the value 
of the farming lands of Yirginia, would add over $216,- 
000,000 to the wealth of that State. Then she would re- 
ceive $118,000,000 in money from the National Treasury, 
as compensation for manumitting her slaves. Putting this 
and that together, she would realize $334,000,000 at once 
from emancipation on the terms proposed. This would be 
equal to $700 per head for the slaves, taking young and 
old, sick and disabled ; which must be at least twice their 
average value. Take the case of Missouri, with its vast 
expanse of uncultivated and low-priced lands, all adapted 
to free white labor. In the census of 1850, the value of 
her farms is set down at $63,325,543, although her terri- 
tory contains 41,623,680 acres, thus averaging only about 
$1 50 per acre for the whole area of the State. Every in- 
telligent Missourian must see, that this is an exceedingly 
meagre value for a vast landed estate, containing as many 
arable acres to the square mile as any State in the Union. 
It must be difficult for him to account for this fact, except 
from the existence of slavery. To say that the honorable 



38 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

and equitable extinction of this system would double, treble 
or quadruple the worth of the lands in Missouri, must be a 
moderate estimate of their enhancement in his view. But, 
assuming that the act would only double the present value 
of those lands, there would be over $63,000,000 added at 
once to the wealth of Missouri, from this source of in- 
creased prosperity. Then she would receive from the Na- 
tional Treasury about $22,000,000 for the emancipation of 
her slaves ; making an aggregate consideration of $85,000,- 
000 for manumitting 87,000 slaves, or nearly $1,000 per 
head. But every well-informed and candid Missourian, 
who fully understands the natural resources of his State, 
its peculiar location and relationship, must surely admit 
that emancipation would quadruple, in five years, the pre- 
sent value of its lands, thus increasing its wealth by $200,- 
000,000. This amount, even without any compensation 
from the National Treasury, would be equal to $2,000 per 
head for every emancipated slave. * 

Another source of material wealth which may be justly 
added to the other considerations in favor of emancipation, is 
the rise of real estate in towns and villages, which would in- 
evitably and immediately result from the act. In the fore- 
going estimates, its effect upon farming lands has only been 
noticed. The value of these, for purely agricultural purpo- 
ses, it has been assumed, would be doubled. But extinguish 
slavery in the Southern States, and thousands and tens of 
thousands of acres along their sea-coats and river-shores 
would be sold by the foot instead of the acre, and for a 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 39 

price approaching to that of building scites in Chicago, 
St. Pauls, Milwaukee, and other Western towns. Eman- 
cipation would raise up thousands of thrifty villages south 
of Mason and Dixon's line, which land would be sold 
for $1,000 per acre. Ten times the amount of land thus 
sold for city and village scites, would be increased to tenfold 
their present value by their proximity to these new markets 
and centres of population and trade. 

These are some of the leading pecuniary inducements 
\rhich would operate upon the great majority in the South- 
ern States in favor of emancipation. Thousands of their 
most intelligent minds must be prepared to appreciate these 
material considerations ; as well those of higher import- 
ance, founded in the moral well-being of the community in 
which they dwell. Make the offer suggested, and these 
material and moral considerations would inevitably and at 
once divide the whole population of every Southern State 
into two great parties, one for emancipation, the other for 
the retention of slavery. An immediate and general dis- 
cussion would ensue, and the final issue of it could not be 
doubtful. 

Doubtless thousands of good and true men in the North, 
as well as a majority of the Southern people, have come to 
regard emancipation in the West Indies as a partial or 
utter failure, so far as relates to the habits and condition 
of the colored people on those islands. Having arrived at 
this conclusion, they easily and naturally adopt the idea, 
that the same failure would attend the manumission of the 



40 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

slaves of the United States. We fully believe that both 
the premise and conclusion in this case are incorrect and 
mistaken. In the first place, no true friend of freedom and 
justice should admit or regard emancipation in the West 
Indies as a failure ; but if it were proved to be a failure, that 
would not be an evidence that the same or a similar result 
would attend the experiment in the United States. We 
cannot here bring forward the facts connected with the con- 
dition of the West Indies prior and subsequent to emanci- 
pation. Two or three may be succinctly stated. For at 
least a century previous to this event, the proprietors of the 
cotton and sugar plantations on those islands were the 
worst kind of absentees. They mostly resided in England, 
squandering at fashionable watering-places all they could 
drain from estates they seldom, if ever, visited, and which 
were managed by a posse of attorneys, clerks, and overseers, 
who, in their turn, put them through the process of a second 
draining to fill their pockets. A far better system of ab- 
senteeism and proxy managing than this almost ruined Ire- 
land, involving a great portion of its lands in such heavy 
indebtedness, that Government had at last to cut the meshes 
of incumbrance, and force the mortgaged estates into liquid- 
ation and sale. For many years prior to emancipation, the 
crops of most of the West Indian plantations were mort- 
gaged at seed time, to capitalists or merchants in England, 
for advances made at Jewish rates of interest. In the 
hands of these sharpers, cotton and sugar were sold like 
forfeited goods in the pawnbroker's shop. If there had 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 41 

never been a slave in the West Indies, this system would 
lave inevitably terminated in a smashing break-down. 
A-nd that break-down came. Even emancipation could not 
prevent it, nor could it expedite the issue. 

Now, would emancipation in the United States find the 
planters of the South in this condition ? Have they pur- 
sued a system of absenteeism like that described ? Have 
they for years been rolling and lolling in indolence and dis- 
sipation at watering places, three thousand miles distant 
from their estates ? Have they been in the habit of pawn- 
ing their crops, ere sown, in the shaving shops of English 
cotton brokers or capitalists for advances at runious rates, 
perhaps to be spent at the dice-box or card table ? Have 
they thus meshed their estates with mortgages beyond 
extrication ? No ; far from it, every candid mind must 
admit. There is hardly any economical analogy between 
the planters of the West Indies and those of the Southern 
States, considering their condition prior to emancipation. 
There would doubtless be far less parity of condition after 
the act of manumission ; even if we assume that the com- 
pensation jper slave were exactly equal in the two cases. 
The British Government paid $100,000,000 for the libera- 
tion of about 800,000 bond men, women and children, or 
about $125 per head. The United States Government pays 
$875,000,000 for the manumission of 3,500,000. Every 
dollar of this vast sum would go directly to the Southern 
States, adding so much virtually to their wealth ; consti- 
tuting so much money capital in the hands of the planters, 



42 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

wherewith to commence the economy of free labor produc- 
tion ; wherewith to recover their estates to more than ori- 
ginal fertility, and to hire free sinews for their cultivation. 
Compare this condition with that of the West Indies. 
Nearly every pound sterling of the compensation allowed 
by the British Government was retained in England, in the 
hands of the absentee proprietors, their creditors and Par- 
liamentary agents. Hardly a dollar of the amount granted 
ever found its way to the plantations thus bled to death's 
door beyond the sea. Is there not a difference here upon 
which a different result of emancipation may be predicted 
in favor of our Southern States ? But there is another 
difference in their favor of vast importance. In the plan 
already developed and presented to the public, it is pro- 
posed that the American planters shall receive $250 instead 
of $125, for the emancipation of their slaves. Now would 
it not be a preposterous apprehension on their part to fear 
a West India break-down as the result of emancipation, 
with this enormous sum in their hands ? 

Then there is another grand difference of position in fa- 
vor of the Southern States. Under slavery or freedom, 
there could be comparatively no emigration of free labor- 
ers from Europe to the West Indies. Thus the enhance- 
ment of the price of lauds in those islands must depend 
mostly upon the ability of the emancipated slaves to pur- 
chase and till them profitably. On the other hand, there 
is nothing but the existence of slavery in the Southern 
States that turns away from their borders the gulf-stream 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 43 

of that immigration which would else overspread their terri- 
tory and occupy and enrich their thinly settled and im- 
poverished lands. Doubtless every acre in Virginia or Mis- 
souri would be trebled in value to-morrow, if it could be 
made certain to-day that slavery in those States would be 
abolished in the course of five years. Thus emancipation, 
according to the plan proposed, would put into the hands 
of the Southern States nearly $900,000,000 in ready money. 
Then it would at least double the value of their farms, esti- 
mated in 1850 at $1,119,000,000. Here are about $2,000- 
000,000, as the pecuniary result of emancipation to the 
Southern States, without counting other sources of income 
and prosperity which the measure would produce. 

We now come to notice briefly the common argument or 
impression, that the manumitted slaves will not work for 
the stimulus of wages ; that they will sink down into 
drivelling indolence and barbarism, if released from the 
sting of the lash. The West Indies experiment is brought 
forward to sustain this conclusion. There the emancipated 
Africans cannot be hired to work ; they will see the sugar 
plantations ruined for, labor, before they will supply it with 
their own hands. We think it quite likely that this is 
true. We hope it is, at least. We hope that the miserly 
pittance of a shilling a day, offered by the ci-devant slave- 
holders of Jamaica or Barbadoes, will never hire many 
freed men to labor for their former masters, either in those 
islands or in our Southern States. They never will do it, 
we are confident, after having been able to buy or rent two 



44 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

or three acres of land. We believe that the charge of in- 
corrigible indolence brought against the emancijpados of the 
West Indies to be a libel on the truth. It is the brutal 
verdict of the old dilapidated plantation. It is the item 
wherewith the deficit is balanced in the inventory of hogs- 
heads of sugar. Again we express our hope that men 
freed from slavery will not work for a shilling a day, either 
in the West Indies or the United States. We do not be- 
lieve that our Southern planters would have the face to 
ask even a slave to work for that price, and board himself. 
There are thousands and tens of thousands of slaves hired 
from their owners in the Southern States at the rate of 
from $100 to $200 a year, to be fed, clothed and housed 
by the employer. On an average, $12 a month are paid for 
their labor, over and above the expense of their food, 
clothing, &c. In hundreds of cases, their employers give 
them a chance to earn something for themselves, as a special 
stimulus to their industry. They find this good policy, and 
are willing to pay 50 cents a day to the owner of the slave, 
and 25 or 50 more to the slave himself for the work he 
may accomplish by extra exertion from sun to sun. It is 
the work he wants, and the extra half dollar he pays to 
the slave for it, is a profitable investment. Thus, there is 
but little danger that the planters of the South would force 
their former slaves into West India idleness by offering 
them only a shilling a day for their labor. We would earn- 
estly commend this consideration to the attention of those 
who have honestly apprehended such a result. 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 45 

Since the rapid and wonderful settlement of California, 
and the still more remarkable movements of the population 
of Eastern Asia, the Chinese have formed no inconsiderable 
stream of that broad river of emigration which is now 
pouring nearly half a million of human beings yearly upon 
the Atlantic and Pacific shores of this continent. Con- 
sidering the vast population of China, and the sudden open- 
ing of the great empire ; the condition of the people ; their 
struggle for sustenance, and the miserly pittance of food on 
which they subsist, and the facility with which they might 
be imported into the United States, the question has been 
naturally suggested, whether or not these Asiatic myriads 
might not be profitably substituted for the African race in 
the Southern States. This question has been seriously dis- 
cussed. The central fact of the proposition is this ; that 
the Chinese are to be substituted for the Africans, at least 
in a far higher condition of freedom than it is thought safe 
to concede to the latter. Doubtless all the Southern plant- 
ers, who have considered this suggestion, have concluded 
that these Chinese laborers must not be literally bought, 
and sold, and flogged as slaves ; that they must be paid 
after a certain rate for their toil ; that they must be al- 
lowed a considerable scope and verge of liberty. Now, 
then, mi bono ? What earthly advantage could accrue to 
the Southern States from the change of races on their soil ? 
Draft a thousand of common field-hands from any dozen 
plantations, and set them front to front with the same num- 
ber of these Asiatic pagans, and see which would show the 



46 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

greatest apitude and fitness for the culture of cotton, corn, 
or sugar. In what one quality of disposition, or of physi- 
cal constitution, would the Chinese be preferable ? Could 
they perform more work per day ? Would they be more 
tractable or faithful in-doors or out-doors ? Would the 
moral atmosphere of their life and habits be more congenial 
and agreeable ? Could they be taken safely into more inti- 
mate personal relations and intercourse with the planters 
and their families, as trusty and affectionate servants ? In 
complexion, features, and form, in voice and language, 
would they be less exposed to prejudice, and more easily 
amalgamated with the native white population, and more 
speedily Americanized and Christianized ? These are a 
few of the questions involved in the proposition of changing 
races, in order to improve the labor of the Southern States. 
We believe the anticipation of any benefit from such a 
change is a complete and utter fallacy. If the Southern 
planters and farmers had the range of all the races and 
populations of the globe, they would not find one more 
suited to their sun and soil than the three millions of African 
blood who now cultivate their fields, and serve them in 
every capacity of industry. The raw material of their 
labor is the best the world can furnish them. It is the 
natural, native, acclimated labor of the South, fitted to 
bear the heat and burthen of Southern sun and agricul- 
ture ; to live and thrive where white men would droop and 
die. Search the earth over, and you will not find for the 
South labor more docile, or laborers, male and female, 



EMANCIPATION FOR UNION. 41 

more capable of endurance, or more susceptible of warm 
and faithful attachment to their employers. Then why 
change them for an equal number of copper-colored pagans 
from China ? There surely can be but one advantage an- 
ticipated from such a substitution, and that must be pre. 
dicated on the positive admission that Chinese labor would 
be more profitable, because it would be comparatively free ; 
that, among other conditions, it would all be hired labor, 
and hired of those alone whose own sinews were to perform 
the work ; that consequently all the capital invested in the 
labor bestowed on one years' crop would be the one years' 
wages of the men employed to plant and gather it. Now, 
put that consideration with another from which it cannot 
be disconnected, and see to what an issue we come. In 
order to effect this substitution, the slaves must be displaced 
and sent beyond the bounds of the Union, if not to Africa. 
On what conditions ? There is not wealth enough outside 
of the Union, in the Western Hemisphere, to buy them, 
were there a disposition for it. Africa will not buy them 
back. The Northern States will never tax themselves to 
compensate the slaveholders for freeing and then banishing 
them, by expensive and cruel transportation. We hope 
our Southern brethren will believe this. The time may 
come, and soon, when the North, in its intense desire to 
extinguish forever the system of Slavery, and to lift from 
this great land the perilous incubus that weighs it down, 
may offer to share with the South the cost of emancipation ; 
but it will be on the condition that the emancipated slaves « 



48 UNION FOR EMANCIPATION. 

shall not be exiled by force, as if freedom were a crime to 
possess, and as if they must be punished for the gift. No ; 
if they are ever bought out of slavery, from the national 
treasury, they must remain in the land of their birth, in 
which they have as much right to dwell as any other por- 
tion of its population, and to which their labor is indispen- 
sable and invaluable. Now, then, why not at once put 
them at least in the very condition in which it is proposed 
by some southern economists to introduce the Chinese? 
On what possible ground can you apprehend that it would 
be unsafe to give to the men and women born on your 
plantations, that degree of freedom which you would ac- 
cord to those idolatrous foreigners from Asia? Would 
you prefer Chinese labor because it would be free, and 
easily obtained on hire ? Then free the human sinews you 
have bought, and which you hold as property, and you will 
have the best, most natural, faithful and trusty laborers the 
world can yield you. You have seen, by many aud various 
experiments, how the slave will work, when you bring him 
partially under the influence of hope and reward ; when 
you allow him a chance to purchase, by an extra effort, a 
few hours daily, in which he may work for wages. Give 
him all the hours of the day, and bring to bear upon him 
all the aims and impulses that stimulate freemen, and prove 
what he will do in that condition. It is the only one that 
can raise the labor of the South to the standard of that 
which enriches and elevates the free States. Whenever our 
Southern brethren are ready for this step, they will find a 
large and generous co-operation on the part of the North. 



A USEFUL ORNAMENT FOR EVERY FAMILY. 



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Just Published is a large and elegant, Plate for Framing, containing seven 
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DAYTOtf k BURDICK, Publishers. 



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No. 4«j ANN STREET, Corner of Nassau, IV. Y 






i 



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i 







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l 



THE LIFE OF 



! CHARLES SUMNER, 

w idlttlr (iloite Specimens m Iris Qjlcqucncc, 

1 A 1I1T1 IF I ORATORICAL CMRA! 



I 
I 



X\ 



1 



GREAT SPEECH ON KANSAS. 
BY Bo A. HAJESHA, 



w?i Author of " Eminent Orators and Statesmen." <£c, &c., with a 

./••• FINE PORTRAIT OF MR. SUMNER, 

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AND AN" ENGRAVING REPRESENTING 



1 THE ASSAULT IN THE 8RMTI dMIEER. 



350 Pajes, 12mo., Cloth.— PRICE, $1,00. 
From the New England Farmer, Boston % Mass. 



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^■3 This tribute to our noble and eloquent Senator is very neatly executed, 

2|\ and will gratify the wishes of thousands, who desire to know more of the 

j personal history of the man who has mr.de so bold a mark upon his age. 

1 Jt is not a romantic or eventful life lhat is here recorded ; but it is 0110 

r X full of instruction for the young, full of encouragement to the timid, and 

( full of interest io all. Besides a memoir of Mr. Sumner, the volume 



I full of interest io all. Besides a memoir of Mr. Sumner, the volume con- 

clb tains choice extracts from most of his speeches, the great Kansas speech 

I entire, and some of the most scathing denunciations of the Brooks assault, 

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\lP tains a portrait of Mr. S. and a view of the assault in the Senate Chamber 

"This is an excellent and timely book. It will find a host of readers. 

It is embellished with a portrait of Sumner, and a view of the assault upon 

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" Eminent Orators and Statesmen." — Salem Observer, Mass. 

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^ja Mr. Sumner as he is, and sets before its renders some of the gems of thought 

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c h From the Daily Journal, Bangor. Mc. 

'iP " This memoir gives the leading incidents in the life of the Massachusetts 

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1 i( KW Agents wanted in all parts of the Country, to sell this Edok. 

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